Perspective From A Stay At Home Dad

Being a stay at home parent is not an easy task. For some, it’s a completely new transition from a traditional career to a career as a parent. Staying home is work, and like or not, it’s just as much as a “job” as going to an office and working 9-5, in some cases, harder. Stay at home parents have traditionally been women, but men staying at home shouldn’t be overshadowed, because there have always been dads that took the role seriously and who enjoyed being home to raise their kid(s) while their spouse or partner was being financially responsible for the family.

With so many unique parenting situations that are being the norm in our society, men are stepping up and wanting to fulfill the stay at home role. In a parenting perspective blog we found, a stay at home dad opens up about his comfortability in his role-reversal with his wife. This is an example of a tradional heterosexual married couple, but we thought his insights to being a man that stays home to raise his kids were cute and on-point. The parents were able to negotiate switching roles back and forth. The full blog can be found here.

As a stay-at-home dad, I have learned not only patience but also the guitar, not only how to juggle priorities but also how to roll spheres on my body as a street performer in downtown Fargo.

My wife has been busy as well, adding writing and birth work as a doula to her professional bag of tricks.

There are noses (and butts) to wipe, but there are also games to play, books to read, and social skills to develop. The dishes, the sweeping, the drudgery and the joy appeared to be never ending.

Yet as all things must, and this too has passed.

Last summer, after several rounds of spousal negotiations, we decided to switch roles once again. I would seek full-time employment of the paid variety, freeing Janelle to pursue her work as a doula and writer (on top of the myriad cares and concerns of being a stay-at-home mom to 6-year-old Dylan and 4-year-old Julia.

A good friend asked me a while back if it was hard to be working full time again, and I laughed and laughed. It is so much easier than staying at home!

For one thing, people arrive on their own in the morning fully dressed and presumably having eaten a healthy breakfast. We can only wish for such amazing self-direction from our children. I never have to ask anyone at work if they need to use the restroom before we leave for lunch. So easy!

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